Alaska Update: Murky Claims She Has Insurmountable Lead

At my last update, I suggested that if the numbers held steady, Lizzie Maggonsky would end up winning without ever having to count the challenged ballots. She's claiming that's where we are now:

Even subtracting all the votes counted for Murkowski but challenged by the Miller campaign, Murkowski would still be ahead by 2,247 votes. That margin appears to make Miller's lawsuit asking the courts to toss out misspelled votes irrelevant. There aren't enough misspelled votes identified for Miller to win.

But Miller isn't giving up yet. New wrinkle:

The Miller campaign wants the Division of Elections to recount the entire Senate race by hand, spokesman Randy DeSoto said Tuesday night.

[...]

But DeSoto said that the lawsuit is continuing and the campaign hopes a hand recount will pick up more Miller votes. There were more than 255,000 votes cast in Alaska's Senate election.

DeSoto noted the write-in ballots were reviewed by hand to see what name voters wrote in. "Given how close the vote totals are, Miller needs to be given the same opportunity of having all of his ballots inspected and counted by hand to ensure every vote cast for him is counted," DeSoto said in a written statement.

The Alaska Division of Elections, not surprisingly, isn't thrilled about the idea. The director says that recounts aren't done using hand counts, but rather by re-scanning the ballots with optical scanners.

posted by Gabriel Malor at 07:09 AM

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